.ova Conversion to .vmk and .vmdk

Today I learned that the “.ova” packages provided by some vendor for VMWare ESX are from an open standard (OVF).

There is an existing VMWare tool (OVFTool) that can be used to convert any such “.ova” file to easily runable “.vmk” files.

The usage is simple enough :

ovftool.exe SOME_OVA_FILE.ova NEW_VMKNAME.vmk

I found the original information in this simple how-to.

Virtual box image creation

Note : For some reason, a “direct import” of the .ova file in Virtual Box would always fail… hence this very manual tutorial.

To create a virtual box image:

• Create a new Virtual Machine.
• Add all the “VMDKs” (Virtual Disk exported from in the previous section) as virtual disks in the new VM.
• Boot & Pray™